Deep renovations in different business environment

EU Member States are encouraged to promote energy upgrading to a higher level than EPBD by Energy Efficiency Directive, EED Article 4. The increased efficiency measures, such as a 60 per cent reduction in energy consumption, are now required. Obviously, from an economic point of view the challenge varies from country to country. The objective of this study is to compare the challenges of deep renovation targets in different economic environments. A deep renovation concept for a residential building is the same in every assessed country and is formulated on the basis of joint research projects. Characteristics of the different countries taken into account are: degree days, energy price level and construction cost level. The values of variables are determined by EU Statistics. The comparison method is payback period. It is easiest to achieve targets in several Eastern European countries, where buildings are wasting energy, energy is relatively expensive and construction costs are low. It is significantly more difficult to achieve the target in the Northern Europe where cold winters have through the decades have forced investments in energy-efficiency, energy is relatively cheap and construction costs are high. Even when technically Deep Renovations look feasible; they may be still too expensive.